In a large majority, the police department, holding in its hands the power to enforce or ignore the laws of the city, state or country, is the thumb screw used by the Vice Trust to exact its toll of sin-existence.
This body of men, each one of whom swore on his word of honor before God and man to enforce the man-made laws, as a whole, is decaying with the poison of graft and vice in its veins.
From a servant of the people, the policeman has become the servant of the people’s enemies.
Trapped and enmeshed by the political powers above them hundreds of policemen prostitute their power for the purpose of aiding and abetting sin and vice and in defrauding the people of their proper tax-paid protection.
There are 4,000 members of the department of police in Chicago today. There are a chief of police, twenty captains, numerous lieutenants and sergeants and at least 3,800 patrolmen. Through this body of men, many of whom promised their God and their own conscience to do their duty, are men sold body and soul to the vice lords who, it has been shown, control Chicago and derive fortunes from the exploitation of vice.
These are the men to whom every law abiding citizen trusts his or her life year in and year out. These are the men appointed to protect property against criminal depredation, to make the streets clean of crime, and to watch over our children.
And yet, investigation has shown that the executive heads of this big law enforcing system, in many instances, are crooked, corrupt and purchased.
Many of the men holding high positions in the police department are there because the Vice Trust has found them of service and because they are ready ever to do the bidding of their masters.
The politics of the department is largely a matter of the politics of the Vice Trust, as has been shown by recent investigations.
Gambling runs full blast, houses of prostitution openly carry on their immoral practices, street walkers wink at the policemen on their beats, pickpockets laugh at the plain clothes men, robbers loot homes and places of business, crimes of every conceivable description are committed, a gambling war is allowed to terrorize Chicago, because the police department is sold body and soul, revolver and star, to the masters of the underworld.